Foreign News: Never! Never!

"The better class of Turks have never practiced polygamy. Public opinion in Turkey has been consistently against the harem—despite the fact that every Sultan kept one. There are fewer polygamous relationships in Turkey, today, than in any other European country. . . .

"More veils are worn by the women of Paris, at present, than by the women of Constantinople and Angora. . . . There never were more than a minor proportion of Turkish women who wore veils. . . . The women of the Turkish countryside were never veiled, and the town women, like those of Paris, wore veils only so long as they considered them embellishments....The modern Turkish woman dresses and wears her hair exactly as she pleases...[and] marries when and whom she wants to.

"Equality of men and women is more racially ingrained with the Turks than with other Eastern peoples. . . . The Turks in many ways resemble the Nordic peoples. You will see that as you study them."

Many a U. S. brain reeled, last week, under the impact of the words just quoted, and recovered, groggily wondering if all its ideas about Turks and Turkey were completely false.

The speaker was Halidé Edib Hanoum, which is to say, Madame Halidé Edib. She has been called by Charles Richard Crane,* "the most brilliant woman in Asia." She is a novelist of tempestuous plots; a most prolific and persuasive publicist; and finally she is the only woman whose name springs instantly to mind when one sets out to enumerate the founders of the new and intensely nationalist Republic of Turkey.

Mme. Halidé Edib lectured last week at Williams College, U. S. A., before what is called the Williamstown (Mass.) Institute of Politics (TIME, Aug. 8, 1927). She was the first woman ever invited to so lecture. She dwarfed the Conference.

President Harry Augustus Garfield of Williams College, chairman of the Conference, opened proceedings, last week, with an address which reached its climax in the statement: "Prohibition is an issue, which, like Banquo's Ghost, will not down!"

Among the 200 persons assembled in conference, last week, were educators (64), authors & editors (16), lawyers (13), Army & Navy officers (12), clergymen and missionaries (9), diplomatic & consular officials (5), and physicians (2).

Guest lecturers, besides Halidé Edib, included:

Dr. C. C. Wu, the Plenipotentiary at Washington of the New Chinese Nationalist Government (see CHINA).

Count Carlo Sforza, a pre-Mussolini statesman who was once (1920) Italian Minister for Foreign Affairs, has entitled his Williamstown lecture: The Responsibilities for the World War: Personal Recollections. As everyone who knows Count Sforza knows, his tide of personal recollections is not difficult to take at the flood.

Dr. Louis Pierard, fiery Belgian Socialist & Laborite, was counted on to tousle his hair, characteristically, while describing Current Political Problems in Belgium.

Dr. Otto Hoetzsch, the reactionary German Nationalist, seemed a queer choice, because he was expected to expound Germany's Foreign and Domestic Policies. It so happens that the German Nationalists, as a party, represent the antithesis of the present foreign policy of Germany, and are quite out of touch with the Republic's most advanced and Socialist domestic policy.